The Swimming Lesson
by Quisty Almasy1
Summary: During some down time from saving the world, events leading up to a swimming lesson one fateful afternoon, change Gambit's relationship with his team mate, the mute empath, Poe, for the better... feat. Gen X & X-Force -Please R&R (Gambit X OC)
1. Angel Eyes

During some down time from saving the world, events leading up to a swimming lesson one fateful afternoon, change Gambit's relationship with his team mate, the mute empath, Poe, for the better... feat. Gen X & X-Force -Please R&R (Gambit X OC)  
  
Disclaimers: I do not own the X-men, Generation X, or X-Force, or even Remy (though my hormones wish I did!). My only claim to any of this is Poe's character and abilities. All the rest belongs entirely to Stan Lee and those wonderful people at Marvel.  
  
Uncanny X-men/X-Force/Generation X crossover  
  
' The Swimming Lesson'   
  
Chapter 1  
  
'Angel Eyes'  
  
It was a cheery April morning when Remy Lebeau aka. 'Gambit' ,came down from his room to join the combined teams for a big home cooked breakfast that Jean Grey and Ororo Monroe were preparing....  
  
He didn't see the need to go too fancy with clothes, so he just kept his black silk boxers on and tugged a white bonds shirt on to cover his well sculptured chest.  
  
When he came from the stairs, he found most of the teams assembled around the huge extended dining table with pancakes piled on plate galore. As always, his eyes searched out his sapphire-haired angel, and his breath caught loud enough to make a few of the others stare at him when he saw her....  
  
She stood by out on the deck overlooking the lake in the early morning sunshine, nursing a bowl of porridge on the railing as she stooped over to sip it, making her little butt all the more prominent faced towards him...And what she was wearing didn't help him either; a thin little white nightgown with shoe string straps and a plunging neckline of lace...The way the sun shone through it and silhouetted her pettie yet curvy form made his boxers fit a little more snuggly....  
  
"He's doing it again!" Jubilee quipped to everyone in a sing song voice and snickered.  
  
Logan sniffed the air, and picked up the scent of the Cajun's arousal once his attention was brought to it by the kid, and he just smiled. As he passed Remy on his way into the kitchen to snag a brewski, he muttered to him; "Yeah, I know... Nice view, huh?"  
  
Remy glared at his back in hot jealousy, and Logan grinned to himself, getting the reaction he had been fishing for.  
  
Deciding he was sick of the others sneaking glances and whispering behind their hands about him, he stalked out onto the balcony to say good morning to his reason for living....  
  
"Mornin', ma chere..." he whispered, always slipping into the soft and calm voice he used when he was around her. It was a bad idea to get mad around Poe. Her empathy was unprecedented, and even a negative undertone in a single word could put her on the defensive or make her rather upset. And he would sooner die than be the reason for any grief to his 'Angel Eyes'....  
  
She straightened from the rail, setting her bowl down on the patio furniture as she turned to grin ecstatically at him. That smile just made his heart palpitate and speed up. In the sun light, her sky blue hair shimmered like gossamer silk, matched only in its brilliance by her alabaster skin, reflecting the light so it seemed she glowed....  
  
Her eyes were her enigma, drenched in the feelings she could not express, strong enough to break a grown man's heart.  
  
God, he loved those eyes when they smiled at him like that. They were the most lurid cornflower blue, and when she stared at him, they had the effect of big brown puppy dog eyes to a child looking in the pet shop window.  
  
She always got all excited when he talked to her, he only had to utter a single word to make her smile at the sound of his voice, and her smile just broadened ear from ear. She swept up to him, beaming, to throw herself into his arms and hug him tightly. Remy's breath caught in his throat when she did that. The fact that she was so close to him, that he could touch her, it was indescribable. As he often did, he now gently wrapped his arms around her to reciprocate the hug -one snaked around her waist, the other up across her back to hold the back of her head in his hand and pat the sapphire silken hair gently. He had died and gone to heaven in her arms, he was certain -but then again that was what he thought every time she touched him like this - and he guiltily felt himself savour it when she settled to press in against him in all the places that counted; belly to belly, thigh to thigh, snuggled in the paradise of her hips -- Just stop thinkin', LeBeau, stop right there! he scolded himself. He tried to distract himself now by turning his head into her hair and inhaling deeply, taking in the smell of her, and she smelt gloriously just like sunshine, blueberry scented shower gel and warm skin, there was no other way to describe it.   
  
"Uh oh," Jean mused as she set down a towering plate of pancakes on the table, at the same time turning to watch the breakfast entertainment that had everyone captivated out on the balcony. "Did he just smell her hair?"  
  
"Looked like it to me!" Jubilee grinned, snagging a pancake from the top and smothering it in syrup.  
  
Jean shook her head and wandered back into the kitchen, tsk-tsking to herself.  
  
"What? Is that a crime??" Beast enquired sheepishly. Jubilee rolled her eyes.  
  
"Gawd, Blue! You of all people should know, being the sciency type nerd!" she exclaimed, apparently not noticing Beast's glare for her description. "Cosmo says that women let out these 'fero-moan' things through their scalp, and when a guy gets a whiff of 'em...Well, it's on!"   
  
"What's 'on'?" Paige asked, looking puzzled.   
  
The Jubester rolled her eyes again and Cable conceded that if she did that again, they'd roll right out of her head.   
  
"Yanno!" Jubille made gestures with her index finger and thumb, using the other finger to demonstrate what she meant but jabbing the pointer into the ring made by her fingers a couple of times and grinned. Paige went red.  
  
Douglock blinked at this new information, then promptly leant over to smell Wolfsbane's hair, much to the girl's puzzlement.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Back out on the balcony, Remy had found it somewhere within himself to let her go from the lock of his arms, and sat and watched her finish her porridge with the backdrop of the shimmering water reflecting the sunlight off it in glittering splendor at her back. She caught his eyes on her, and broke out into another grin that almost made him reach across the table and drag her mouth to his, kiss away that smile and make it his own forever.  
  
The most adorable thing about Poe, was she was honest in everything when it came to him. With the others, whom she still hadn't opened up to, she had every psychic and proverbial wall in place to hide behind, everything was so locked down and she was so cautious... But with him the barriers just weren't there and she expressed her every spontaneous desire. If she wanted to hug him, she hugged him, if she wanted to cry, she cried, without any thought to what any one else would think. As am empath, Poe was really a by-product of her surroundings. She took in the emotions of those around her, and in some way, she made them part of her own and they affected how she acted. On the same token, the mute communicated by projecting her own emotions to those around her, rather potently sometimes. It was her empathy that had saved her from the basement in Department H's compound. If she hadn't of entered their dreams, conveyed her sorrow, they never would have found her down there... The thought made him shiver and want to hold her sometimes when he saw her as she had been for the first time that day: hanging from the restraints which pinned her arms above her shoulders, outstetched as if crucified upon the horrid contraption. She had been wearing the tattered remains of the filthy, thread bare, thermal panties and a breast band. Those awful plugs embedded in her flesh along her arms, her collar bone, her thighs, wrists, ankles, temples, and spine were like festering sores, some of them indeed bleeding where the thousands of wires were hooked into her neural system...  
  
He wondered to himself if in all this time, she had felt his emotions coming off him. Did she have any idea how much he loved her or the reasons he held himself back?  
  
"We're goin' down de lake swimmin' after breakfast... You wanna come, ma amour?" he asked casually.  
  
Her eyes lit up and she nodded enthusiastically, beaming and leaping up out of he chair to hug him again.  
  
"OW!" came a yelp from inside.  
  
Both of them straightened and peered curiously at Jubilee who sat at the table clutching her chest.  
  
"Jeez, Poe!!! Whaddaya tryin' ta do?! Give me a cardiac? Tone down the happy-happy joy-joy!!!"  
  
Poe looked horribly guilty and the others burst out laughing.  
  
  
  
1 


	2. Boat House

Disclaimers: Once again I state I do not own the X-men, Generation X, or X-Force, or Gambit. Poe's character and abilities are my own however. All the rest belongs and always will, entirely to Stan Lee and those wonderful people at Marvel.  
  
Uncanny X-men/X-Force/Generation X crossover  
  
' The Swimming Lesson'   
  
Chapter 2  
  
'Boat House'  
  
The sun was warm enough, watery in the way it was just before the heat of the midday, but there was a slight chill on the breeze that would make you shiver for sure once you got out of the water wet, but thanks to Ororo, the wind was dissipated around the area, giving them perfect swimming weather.  
  
"BOOOOMMMMMMMMBS AWWWWAAAAAAAAY!!!!!" shreiked Bobby Drake, a warning that came too late as he crashed from the rope swing into the water scant dangerous inches from Jubilee, soaking her in tsunami wave, and a little geyser rose up from his landing that had the infuriated teen girl spitting out water left, right and center, hacking.  
  
Remy really couldn't have cared if Bobby had decided to freeze hell over, he wasn't watching the water...  
  
Now, some of the X-ladies uniforms could be skimpy, but their bathing suits left nothing to the imagination. However, his Angel Eyes seemed a little shy to show off her assests, to both his dissapointment and pride at her modesty. She wore a pastel pink bikini bottom, and a white, but still hugging t-shirt with a surf brand hibiscus flower motif on the front in matching pinks that didn't quite meet the bottom and showed just a inch of her creamy stomach. God, even her belly button was cute... She was curled up under a tree, out of the sun for the sake of her white, white skin, her legs tucked slightly to let the natural curves of them lead up to her thighs and to more scenic places, laying on her belly on a towel, absently kicking her legs behind her back and forth, reading a book. He resisted a frown showing on his face at the scars visible on the backs of her thighs, reminders of the surgery Hank McCoy had to perform to get those cursed plugs out of her. The worst part was her knew the scars were on other places too, places that the shirt hid, like her spine and underneath that mass of beautiful blue hair. He felt his lips twitch back to a smile however when he saw the book she was reading was the 'Wind in the Willows' hard cover he had given her for Christmas.  
  
"Could you make that doe eyed expression any more obvious, LeBeau?" came the gruff voice of Logan beside him as he tossed back the last of his can and crushed it in his hand.  
  
Remy glared at him. "Could you be anymore of a pain in de ass, ami?" he shot back.  
  
" Why dontcha get her in the water, eh? Then at least we all get treated to a nice lil wet t-shirt comp..." Wolverine chuckled, unfazzed by Remy's protectiveness. The boy had to at least roll his tongue back in his mouth before he could convince anyone he wasn't thinking the same thing.  
  
"She's wearin a string top 'neath... Ya can see de lines.." he mumbled out, almost to himself.  
  
"Really eh? How hard you lookin', Gambit, cuz I'm the one with heightened senses and I can't see it..."  
  
At least Remy Lebeau had the good grace to blush slightly, before lifting himself on his hands and getting up to walk over to his affection doll, leaving Logan chuckling at his back at catching him out again.  
  
"Chere, ya see, de whole point of swimmin' is actually gettin' in de water...." he told her, huckering down beside her, and he was treated to a heart splintering beam as she dropped the book flat open infront of her and folded her arms, lifting her shoulders to let her crane her neck back and see his eyes better, oblivious of the view down her shirt this gave him. She iwas/i wearing a string bikini top, matching pink as the bottoms, that cupped her high and firm little mounds exquistitely. It was all Remy could do to drag his eyes away from the view before he embarassed her when she realized what he was looking at.   
  
Poe could be so naive of her own sexuality sometimes, it was just another cuteness factor to him... She never wore clothes that weren't simple, she didn't go out of her way to show off her body like the other girls in the teams, because she didn't realize what they were showing off, or the effects it had on the male population. It was a childish type of innocence akin to that of a girl just coming into womanhood and realizing she could no longer go swimming with the boys topless, but not understanding why...  
  
"C'mon," he beckoned her, closing the book -but not without carefully replacing the Garfeild bookmark- and setting it aside. He nudged his head towards the water. "Com'n take a dip wit' me..."  
  
What she let him feel next, he had not expected.  
  
It had taken the X-members quite a while to get used to the girl's empathy. To realize that a pain in your chest caused by the anguish that suddenly rose from no where was not your own, but someone else's. It was a violation in a way, and one that made a few of the other telepaths she came in contact with avoid her. It was a branch breed of psi-onics that few telepaths were strong enough to use, most perfered to convey messages in telepathic words, rather than impulses. And though Poe was an omnipath, and possessed her own level of telepathics, she still relied on her heart more than her head, and not even Charles Xavier had been able to teach her otherwise.   
  
Elizabeth Braddock, the X-man known as Psylocke, had been against Xavier teaching the mute girl from the begining, marshalling behind Jean Grey in agreement with her arguement that Poe was a omnipath of extremities, and dangerous in the fact that when it came to power, she was on par with both women, perhaps even higher. The only thing stopping her from realizing her full potential and going the same way as Onslaught was the fact that she used her abilities in a manner which telepaths called 'reflex'; meaning she only used them defensively, for protection, using her telekinesis to fashion sheilds and relying on her spear-like Psi-mitar for close combat. Remy had been on the recieving end of a blow from that weapon fashioned purely of mental energy once before, and it had concussed him for a good week or so at point blank range...  
  
Remy was now staring at her as he felt terror flood his mind and identified the mental aftertaste of vanilla, that image was like a calling card of sorts, a little trick Xavier had taught her to help the others distinguish what the empath was imputing into their minds, and their own thoughts. He knew the smell wasn't really there, that she was simply tweaking some nerve in his brain that told him he smelt it, but now, that perfume didn't seem too sweet coupled with her fear, almost like an offensive odour. He met her azure blue eyes and observed her tossing worried glances towards the water, conveying to him the feeling of cold seeping into his bones and water filling his lungs to the extent Gambit almost physically choked.  
  
Drowning.   
  
That was what she was trying to show him, and once he realized what she meant, he knew it was a memory. A very bad memory of her time in Antarctica during the hunt for Xavier a few months back. He had been there to see her fall through the ice and become swallowed up by the dark depths. It had been the first time their psychic rapport had rendered him unconscious from the fear she poured ruthlessly into him, begging him to save her. In the end it had been the Russian powerhouse Colossus whom had to go in after her, immune to the biting chill of the water due to his metal form. He had pulled her from the undercurrent and laid her out on the ice, cold and not breathing and for the worst moment he thought he had lost her. All because he couldn't move to lift a finger.  
  
He stooped down to lower his head so he was looking level with her eyes and forced her to keep his gaze with a gentle hand on the cheek. "Cherie," he told her softly, losing himself a moment in the feeling of her warm breath mingling on the tip of his tongue as he breathed her in. "I won't let dat 'appen 'gain, Remy promise ya, amour..."  
  
"What did we do to deserve ibthat/b/i?" Monet grumbled, smearing lotion on her stomach as she sat beside Ororo and glared over at where the blue haired empath lay with Remy.   
  
Storm was not oblivious to her annoyance. Only moments ago, she too had experienced the sudden rush of coolness penetrating her body and a thickness gagging the back of her throat like the heavy weight of water. It had lasted only a moment, gone and quickly as its onset, and the weather witch had easily fingered Poe as the culprit.  
  
"I beleive Poe was merely trying to get her point across to Remy," the african beauty said calmly.  
  
"Yeah, I got that one loud and clear!" Jubilee flopped onto her towel at Storm's feet, wringing her hair out from Bobby Drake's cannonball. "As in 'you-are-so-not-making-me-go-in-there!' Yup, clear as a bell!" The girl's voice held just a little hint of cynicism.  
  
Poe was torn between the frightening view of the lake beside her and the devil red eyes that peered at her with such comfort. She was faithful to him like a trusted canine, and yet so afraid of what he was asking her to do. She could feel that he meant his words, there was nothing but sincerity in his thoughts, and yet she could also detect the rising chagrin of those around her, intimidated by it, wanting to make them happy with her again. But she wanted to make Remy happy too, and she was insightful enough to know she could not do both at once. She could not stop her fear if she went into the water with him, but she could not refuse him either.  
  
Gambit opened his lips to offer her further encouragement when he heard a prominent, but subtle cough at his back, and turned to find Jean Grey beckoning him over to the garden chair set she, Scott and Kurt Wanger were occupying.  
  
"I be right back, dun move, kay?" he whispered to her as he stood and obeyed the summons.  
  
When he got to the table, the red head simply held out a hand and dropped the set of keys to the boat house into his hand. Aware of the watchful eyes of the other members --but not too watchful: Bobby had now chose to stand by the bank and proceed to toss handfuls of water at the girls, adding some ice cubes to the mix, and Rogue was thoroughly threatening to pound him-- the telepath kept her words between them. He heard her gentle voice inside his mind. She said only:  
  
i~Maybe it might be easier if you took her somewhere private, Remy... The pool at the boat house is heated, take as long as you need, just remember to turn the filter on when you leave...~/i  
  
The Cajun looked at the keys in his hand and then winked at her in his usual charm to cover his real gratitude. It was the one time he wasn't going to curse a telepath for being nosy...  
  
  
  
  
  
2 


End file.
